Tag Archives: Aristotle

True But Useless: Why So Much Management Advice Sucks (and what to do about it).

Why does so much management advice sound reasonable but turn out to be of little value? Most readers will know what I mean. Take the following guidance on how companies can ‘accelerate their agile transformation’: Create a C-suite with an … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged abstraction, Alfred North Whitehead, altruism, Aristotle, BSC, budgets, cause-and-effect, complex adaptive systems, Daniel Boorstin, experience, gardeners, gemba, growing people, KPI, Lao-Tzu, management, Mary Parker Follett, MBO, means and ends, measurement, mindset, RONA, selfishness, Stanley McChrystal, Tao Te Ching, truisms | Comments Off on True But Useless: Why So Much Management Advice Sucks (and what to do about it).

The VW Debacle: How Large Successful Organizations and Institutions Can Become “Bad Barrels” And What To Do About It

The outlines of Volkswagen’s comprehensive program to defeat national auto emissions laws are becoming clearer. According to the New York Times the company began installing software designed to cheat on emissions test in 2008, when they realized that their new … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Alex Gorsky, Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Aristotle, change, complex systems, context, creativity, crisis, destruction, diesel emissions, ecological perspective, efficient cause, General Motors, gun control, hip joints, ignition locks, J&J, Johnson & Johnson, material cause, means and ends, Risperdal, shareholder value, Volkswagen debacle, Winterkorn | 1 Comment

Climate Change and Evidence-based Management [Part II]: The Case for Practical Wisdom

This blog is a continuation of last week’s in which I suggested that in managing complex systems with unstable parameters one cannot rely just on data-based predictions, one has to depend more on judgement-based anticipations: In The Rational Optimist Matt … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged analytical philosophy, Aristotle, BCG, confirmation bias, Drucker Forum, Enlightenment, evidence-based, Honda, intrinsic motivation, intuition, Isaiah Berlin, judgement, logical positivism, Matt Ridley, Mr. Spock, Oxford, paradigm shift, phronesis, practical wisdom, rational optimist, rationality, Richard Pascale, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Climate Change and Evidence-based Management [Part II]: The Case for Practical Wisdom

Watch Your Language! Why Metaphors Matter in Management

It’s another launch of another strategic plan to the company’s senior and middle managers and the CEO is rattling on about “roadmaps” and “blueprints” that will generate “traction” in the market and “buy-in” from the employees. The employees are watching … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Aristotle, blueprint, buy-in, change, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, embodied cognition, Gareth Morgan, George Lakoff, Gibson Burrell, Mark Johnson, metaphor, roadmap, Thomas Kuhn, top-down | 1 Comment

Is Conscious Capitalism A Conceptual Mess?

Conscious Capitalism (CC) is featured prominently in the latest issue of the California Management Review (CMR) (Spring 2013, Vol. 55 No. 3.). In an article entitled “Conscious Capitalism Firms: Do They Behave as Their Proponents Say?”, Chong Wang, an Assistant … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Aristotle, Chong Wang, complex systems, conscious capitalism, ecological perspective, innovation, Karl Popper, Max Weber, narrative, Raj Sisodia, The New Ecology of Leadership, Whole Foods | 1 Comment

Essay Based on The New Ecology of Leadership Wins a Top Prize in the Drucker Global Challenge Essay Contest 2012

It’s official! My essay, “Practical Wisdom: Reinventing Work and Reinventing Organizations by Rediscovering Ourselves”, which is based on the ideas in The New Ecology of Leadership, has won a top prize in the Drucker Global Challenge Essay Contest. The organizers … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Aristotle, behavioral economics, body and mind, business schools, Cartesian, Descartes, Drucker Challenge, ecological rationality, emotion and reason, employee society, English Enlightenment, entrepreneurial society., evolutionary biology, facts and values, functional silo, Global Drucker Forum, ideas and matter, ideology of reason, innovation, management thought, markets, moral sentiment, neuroscience, Peter Drucker, phronesis, Plato, positive empirical, Reinventing Organization, Reinventing Work, Scottish Enlightenment, social ecology, social entrepreneurs, Spanish treasure, stability and change, Stephen Toulmin, Thirty Years' War, Vienna, World War II | 1 Comment